“Like a girl” – a brilliant, blistering piece of PR. Watch.

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• SHG says:

  1 July 2014 at 12:14 am

  To say that someone does something – run, throw, hit, fight – “like a girl” is to mean that the person does it in such a way that it’s unlikely to cause death or serious physical injury to a third party. That’s all.

  If you run like a girl you do it in such a way that you’re unlikely to run prey to death. If you throw like a girl you do it in such a way that you’re unlikely to hit prey with a melee weapon and do so hard enough to injure or kill it. If you hit or fight like a girl you do so in such a way that you’re unlikely to cause serious injury or death to your target through upper-body strength.

  They’re just hangover phrases from the hunter-gatherer days. Men went out and killed things, women stayed back and did stuff that actually involved communication and social skills.

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  • Peter Aranyi says:

    1 July 2014 at 7:18 am

    Nice theory, but it’s far more loaded than that, in my opinion.

    It’s been/become a derogative term, in a similar way to calling a weak man or boy a “girl’s blouse”.

    The relatively newer terms “man-look”, “man-flu”, “man-splaining” are mockery, sure, but less invidious than the “like a girl” put-down this video is highlighting.

    – P

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• SHG says:

  1 July 2014 at 11:11 am

  (oops, that sentence in post 1 should have been “…unlikely to hit prey with a MISSILE weapon”)

  We’re apes a handful of generations from having to run after and kill animals, and defeat competing apes, in order to survive. In homo sapiens it’s the male who is specialised to perform those functions in the tribe. Thus males value those physical abilities that are most likely represent potential success in the running after and the killing. It’s not exactly rocket surgery, and it doesn’t represent a concerted effort to bring females down by the evil patriarchy. We’re just violent apes who like to kill things.

  If you want to see truly horrible inter-sex criticism, watch a group of mummy bloggers destroy someone’s career with with innuendo and social ostracism. Now THAT shit is brutal. We simple male apes don’t understand that sort of violence because WE aren’t specialised to do it. We were out chasing things and throwing things at them and punching them instead of evolving relational aggression.

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  • Peter Aranyi says:

    1 July 2014 at 11:28 am

    Ha! You lost me at “mummy bloggers”. I can see what you’re saying but …

    ‘Concerted effort’ it may not be — that doesn’t mean there isn’t inculturation, bias & prejudice. And misogyny, demeaning, limiting etc

    If course, it’s easier to observe these things in the extreme: Taliban preventing education of girls & women for instance.

    Like you, I guess, I am a simple man finding my way in the world as I find it. But I’ve written here before about the unfair pressures and expectations placed on young women — and I really think fair progress for ‘them’ is not a ‘cost’ but a benefit to human society.

    -P

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    • SHG says:

      1 July 2014 at 1:15 pm

      I’m not defending the misogyny of, for example, religious nutters preventing the education of girls.

      I’m just saying that the linked video does not strike me as a particularly powerful statement. It’s perfectly sensible to say that girls can’t run as fast, throw as forcefully or as accurately, or hit as hard as men. They can’t.

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      • Peter Aranyi says:

        1 July 2014 at 1:58 pm

        “I’m not defending the misogyny of, for example, religious nutters preventing the education of girls.

        No, of course you’re not!

        You know, I don’t underestimate the power of this kind of it’s-water-you’re-swinning-in-it prejudice.

        If it burns, it burns … whether you and I, as blokes, can feel it or not.

        I’m in (we’re in) the ‘team’ that’s done well when it comes to power and privilege. I like the video, the campaign. Go for it.

        (signed)

        Sensitive New Age Guy

        Reply